nd wood. High
up in an apple-tree of the Sawyers' orchard a bluebird was caroling
joyously. Miss Arabella had never heard of the man who said that the
bluebird carried the sky on his back, but she involuntarily glanced
from the brilliant azure dot in the tree-top to the vivid blue of the
heavens. "They're awful alike," she whispered, with a smile; then she
glanced inside, "and it's the same color, too! I've a good mind"--she
paused guiltily and glanced toward her brother's house. "I'll just
take one glimpse," she added hurriedly. She put the tablecloth away in
its drawer and ran into the little sitting-room. The old floor, under
its gay covering of rag-carpet and home-made rugs, sank and creaked
with even her light weight. At the sound a querulous voice from the
veranda called "Arabella, Arabella!"

Miss Arabella looked severe. "Polly!" she cried, appearing at the
door. "Now, Polly, be good. You were jist awful yesterday, when the
doctor was passing. You'll try not to say that awful thing, won't you,
Polly?"

"Oh, Annie Laurie, Annie Laurie, Annie Laurie!" gabbled Polly, walking
along her perch head downward. "I'll be good, I'll be good."

Thus assured, Miss Arabella slipped into her spare bedroom. It was a
tiny room, with a close, hushed air. Most of the space was taken up by
a huge feather-bed, whose white surface bulged up like a monstrous
baking of bread. Against the crinkly spars of the low headboard two
stiff pillow-shams stood erect, like signboards, each bearing the
legend, worked in red, "Sweet Dreams." The floor was covered with a
home-made rug, displaying a branch of yellow roses, upon which stood a
mathematically straight line of purple-breasted robins. The one window
was draped in stiff, white lace curtains that fell from the ceiling in
a billowing cascade and flowed out into the middle of the room. Here
the flood was dammed, very appropriately, by two large, pink-tinted
seashells. In one corner stood a high, old-fashioned chest of drawers,
covered with a white cloth worked in red to match the "Sweet Dreams" on
the pillows. It held a small looking-glass flanked by a couple of
china figures; a gay Red Riding-Hood, with a pink wolf, set primly
opposite a striped Bo-peep and a sky-blue lamb. There were pebbles and
shells and pieces of coral, and baskets of beadwork, and many other
ornaments dear to Miss Arabella's heart. She closed the old, creaking
door, placed the one chair against